I have requested that the VPS server the portal runs on be moved from the Los Angles based server facility to a east coast facility. This is to avoid any disruption that could come from a large earthquake on Southern California which is way overdue. My server has other sites on it and I would want all those working after a earthquake.

"The Big One" would knock out all of so cal for weeks if not months.

So im just doing some advanced planning.

The switchover is supposed to be seemless and there will be no loss of service. But I doubt that.

Knowing how this has gone so far... These things are never like they tell me... Im checking with them carefully before they do this.

Just before they do this I will grab a backup just in case.

This really needs to happen as I have confirmed if their west coast facility gets wiped out by a earthquake, the east coast one will be unaffected. So I want my server on the east coast. I was with my last hosting company for 15 years, so, there is a good chance of a major quake in So Cal in the next 15 years. I dont want things down during that time.

I'm glad that's the sort of IT outage I don't have to worry about planning for in the UK. On the other hand I fear your concern over 'the big one' being 'way overdue' is moving you a little closer to the tin foil hat brigade

I have not joined in with Dr Dark Energy. I have a lot of science on my side and I even built my own seismometer right down to my own desiged ULF preamp. Im into the science. Because of this in depth scientific depth, I am very aware that a slip on the lower section of a San Andreas is overdue statistically. Like a lot over due. There are now so many serious scientif studies of this I cant count them. They also know know that the longer between faults the bigger they are. They even have evidence of multiple faults slipping at once. Its DEADLY serious and in scientific terms "way overdue".. So.. In the next 10-20 years its a near certainity scientifically. So im planning ahead.

What you dont read or hear much about is the devastation that will really occur. Forget movies, its worse. Infrastructure undgroud is toast. Water pipes, sewer pipes, power wires, telecom wires and optical runs, everywhere, toast. Point to point radio towers all gone. All of LA will be rendered pretty much unusable for months-years with some stuff taking decades. You dont read about that much cuz its almost to insane to imagine. Above ground is easy, below ground is much harder to fix..

This is a supercomputer, super high science simulation of what will happen. Red means underground is toast. This is in modified mercalli scale. This is dead serious science. This is also real time. THis is how fast it really moves. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvltp9Nf5T4

Pardon my flippant comment about tin foil hats, just an attempt at humour, earthquakes are not trivial, I've been in some small ones and can only imagine what a larger one would be like.

Earthquakes are something I studied at university, not admittedly a major part of my studies but I have considerably more knowledge than most. I have significant doubts about the science and about the models used to make predictions.

To put it in particle physics terms it would be much like trying to study it only via the collisions from cosmic rays. Possible but much harder because you are almost never going to be looking the right way or getting your instruments in the right place to observe things close up because you have no way of accurately predicting where the events will occur.

Our understanding of what goes on underground on our planet is very poor, our ability to study it very limited and our ability to verify the models and simulations we produce is equally limited. There is also the issue of media reporting, as happens so often in science what the media report is not necessarily what the scientists are really saying. This is why I raise an eyebrow at such phrases as "The big one" which just feels like a media simplification of the issues.

Having said all that I'm not saying they're wrong, there is definitely significant risk here and sensible precautions (as you are taking) are definitely justified, but I think they would be justified simply from the geology, regardless of past history. I'm just not as confident in the science as the media seems to be.

Hmmm..... Well they dug up trenches in a bunch of spots and saw a 100 year avg recurrence over 2000 years with some statistics to go with all that. We are at 160 years now. The longest they found between quakes over 2000 years was 200 years and there was only 1.

The quake effects modeling has gotten way better. Its interesting looking at the "did you feel it" reports VS the computer generated "shake Map" The USGS has gotten very good at this here in the US. They can pretty closely predict damage. The "pager" info is also pretty accurate. https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes ... #executive

However, i don't think anyone is any closer to predicting with any real accuracy a quake other then in really general terms. Like that the southern section of the SAF is way overdue.

What im currently pissed about is that a quake warning system is easy to implement and its not been done. There is a good 20-30 seconds before LA is hit after the quake starts. The seismic sensors on the fault detect the huge quake with 100% accuracy in milliseconds as they are on top of the fault. These can then send that data to a alert system that sets off everyones cell phone to get out side immd. 20-30 seconds is a LONG time really to get outside. Or get into shelter. BUT this system is stuck in politics.

Yep. We made it to the new server with zero issues. Also it looks like this server facility is better performance. I have a few tweaks I need to do to further improve performance, but, its looking near instantaneous with a 200ms avg load time for anything you do on the forum.

Well we had to change to a modern version of the forum software. No choice there. The old one was not supported anymore by 4 years and had serious bugs and security issues. The "style" IE look and feel, was not avaliable for the new version of phpbb. So we HAD to change looks. I installed a LOT of styles you can choose from. Go here and try out different styles. http://lhcportal.com/Forum/ucp.php?i=165 As far as the image size thing goes, thats really interesting. Let me play with that for a few mins.. brb.